Transforming a Blog after Purchase

[visiongroup]

Hi All,

As I'm sure everyone knows, blogs are a lot of work. Constantly adding new content can get old. However, there are a lot of blogs for sale for this reason. Many have great assets. What are some ways you've transformed a blog after buying to lower the maintenance of the site? I'd love to hear about successful full transformations of the site not simply tips like "outsource your writing" or "find guest bloggers".

Thanks,
Chris Yates

P.s. I'd rather this wasn't a discussion on why you should or should not buy a blog.

[grynge]

Chris that is a great question, any hints I may give are probably old as I haven't been watching the blogosphere for a couple of years.

Some of the bigger blogs I did take note of started by giving ancilliary tools away and then started charging for them.
Some went the way of video infotorials and/or training.
A few took the easy route of a directory (some were bog standard others tried to jazz them up)

[crabfoot]

There are some blogs which split out easily into articles - you can re-hash these for the public as static sites.

The big improvement is to add images, which most blogs lack. Just go out for the day and take pics of anything inoffensive, the subject matter of the pictures does not have to be relevant to the article, the ALT text does! They don't even have to be real pics. Example:
Attachment 207

It does help if the pics are remotely relevant to the subject - but even a pastoral landscape helps to make many people linger on a page.

[Clinton]

Hi all, I just wanted to say that visiongroup tells me privately that he has some extensive material he wishes to post on this subject and is awaiting a few responses first before posting that.

[rob]

A news rewrite is a base for keeping fresh content on a blog for me, and I prefer to do changes over say 3 months rather than blitz a weekend on it. This is mainly so G + co cant spot its been taken over as I am sure at some point that would come into play in terms of ranking and therefore traffic.

[tke71709]

To deblogify a site I would simply leave it as is (no sense losing link juice and the such by creating new pages with new urls) and disable commenting and any other blog specific items/widgets.

If I were going more hardcore I would:

- Create better pages for SEO purposes (new titles, new urls)
- 301 all the old pages to the new ones
- Remove unnecessary widgets (to avoid having to upgrade them on a regular basis)
- Disable comments (to avoid spam issues)
- Add images to the posts as required

[visiongroup]

Some of the bigger blogs I did take note of started by giving ancilliary tools away and then started charging for them.
Some went the way of video infotorials and/or training.
A few took the easy route of a directory (some were bog standard others tried to jazz them up)

Great ideas here. I've taken over a blog and repurposed the evergreen content to create an info product. It would be a great idea to convert all the best text based content into video infotorials.

There are some blogs which split out easily into articles - you can re-hash these for the public as static sites.

I think this is probably one of the simplest things you can do. You can get rid of dates, add a static page to the homepage, get rid of any mentions of "blog" or "posts" and start calling them "articles".

A news rewrite is a base for keeping fresh content on a blog for me, and I prefer to do changes over say 3 months rather than blitz a weekend on it. This is mainly so G + co cant spot its been taken over as I am sure at some point that would come into play in terms of ranking and therefore traffic.

I think this ties in with the idea of separating out evergreen content from more news type content. Going from a daily blog to an article site with a section for a monthly blog that focuses on rehashing news topics would significantly reduce maintenance.

To deblogify a site I would simply leave it as is (no sense losing link juice and the such by creating new pages with new urls) and disable commenting and any other blog specific items/widgets.

If I were going more hardcore I would:

- Create better pages for SEO purposes (new titles, new urls)
- 301 all the old pages to the new ones
- Remove unnecessary widgets (to avoid having to upgrade them on a regular basis)
- Disable comments (to avoid spam issues)
- Add images to the posts as required

I agree, I think with simple changes to the theme you can turn a blog site to an "about.com" style site. No sense in changing all your urls.


Here are a few tips I came up with for everyone:
- Consider using a plugin like Really Static which converts the database driven pages to flat HTML pages
- Make the blog a community driven blog where members provide the content (similar to a forum).
- Remove anything that makes it "bloggy" like comments, user accounts, post dates, date based archives, etc.
- Look at your analytics to get your top content and build your site around those.
- Build better navigation and categorization to make it more like an about.com style article directory
- Look at your analytics to estimate your cost/benefit of dropping your repeat visits.
- Focus on evergreen content and make the site a comprehensive resource on the topic. Outline everything people want to know about the topic and use existing blog posts to fill out your outline and write new evergreen content for the missing pages.

Anyone have any other ideas of how to appease the repeat visit crowd? If you're going to reduce the frequency of fresh content you provide, what types of things can you do to fill that gap? Perhaps forums, a buddypress type area, facebook pages, auto-generated news headlines via email, etc.?

[crabfoot]

Anyone have any other ideas of how to appease the repeat visit crowd?

Yes - but if that's the kind of traffic you seek, why de-blogify the site? Depends on the nature of the site, but blog style additional material is a good way to refresh the content.

The salient thing about blogs is that the fresh content is upfront and immediately brought to the attention of the repeat visitor. A "recent posts" frame on the index page can serve the same purpose, if you're avoiding a blog.

Run a backgound blog that critiques old eBooks that you have acquired with give-away rights. Give the eBook away as a download when the critique is posted, once or twice a week. That's your cheapo freebie and your instructions to your author sorted out.

Don't summarize the listings anywhere, or provide a separate listing of the eBooks for download. Make 'em sift through or use the site search ...

[Clinton]

Really Static - that's a cool tip.

One good way to transform a blog is to close it down!

Once you've taken it offline you could use its contents on your money blog. This particularly works if your own blog has the audience and needs content while the target blog has the content but not the traffic/revenue.

Anyone have any other ideas of how to appease the repeat visit crowd?

Auto content / Yahoo Pipes type of feed? For example, on this site I could take all Flippa new listings, auto filter ones that lack certain key criteria and consolidate the rest into an automated blog post.

[visiongroup]

Yes - but if that's the kind of traffic you seek, why de-blogify the site?

Great point. Maybe going from 100% blog to 80% static and 20% blog makes more sense. It certainly would reduce maintenance.

One good way to transform a blog is to close it down!

I always have a hard time after investing money into something just to shut it down, but I understand it can be a good strategic move. I've done this successfully by moving the content to a money blog and 301 redirecting the old posts. This was an easier pill to swallow for me.


One other thought regarding the repeat visit crowd would be to create web based tools. You've replaced "posts" which are always nagging you to write something with "tools" which you can code/enhance at your leisure but still give a reason for people to keep coming back to your site.